German Laid-Open Specification DE 30 41 940 A1, for example, discloses a combined supporting, drive and electrical power transmission device for a magnetic levitation railroad vehicle. This device has an elongated stator which is laid along a route and is equipped with a magnet core with a multiplicity of parallel slots which follow one another in the route longitudinal direction and run transversely with respect to the route longitudinal direction; a three-phase AC winding is inserted into the slots. The magnet core and the AC winding of the elongated stator cannot be produced integrally owing to their length, but are composed of individual magnet blocks which are arranged one behind the other, abutting against one another, along the route. The elongated stator has an associated supporting magnet of a magnetic levitation railroad vehicle, which is intended to be moved along the route formed by the elongated stator. The supporting magnet is likewise composed of individual magnet blocks, which have pole heads with slots for holding windings of a linear generator, which is used to supply power to the magnetic levitation railroad vehicle, by inductive means.
It is known that considerable ripple forces occur because of gaps between the individual magnet blocks of the elongated stator on the one hand and gaps between the pole heads of the supporting magnet, as well as a result of the slots in the elongated stator and the slots in the pole heads of the supporting magnet, that is to say fluctuations of the attraction forces between the elongated stator and the supporting magnet. These ripple forces are countered by mismatching the pole heads of the supporting magnet with respect to one another by an integer multiple of the tooth pitch of the elongated stator, which results from the slots. The so-called slot-frequency ripple forces are largely compensated for in this way, seen over the entire supporting magnet.